Lots happening around East London this Thursday and here is another not to miss - PETRO's Beg, Borrow, Steal exhibition opening 1st March 2012, 6.30 - 9.30pm. Show closes 10th March.

Petro’s work is characterised by its endless experimentation with letter formation, a sometimes naive and often nostalgic early eighties aesthetic and a constant drive to subvert the laws of the alphabet and even Graffiti. His endless search is for the perfect expressive solution.

His letterworks are often aided by the inclusion of found objects to construct a personal narrative. The result is works which fall somewhere between artefact and installation through an arresting blend of cultural references and idiosyncratic obsessions.

Galleries Goldstein at Goodhood (GaG), is an exciting new collaborative project. It is a permanent, artist run space, dedicated to showing new art. GaG is located in the Goodhood Workshops which are opposite the well established and massively successful Goodhood store in Hoxton, East London.

A Love Letter For You seamlessly mixes documentary and narrative, love and loss, community and solidarity, art and crime, to paint a compelling portrait of two artists and their impact on the neighborhood they grew up in.

The film documents the notorious graffiti legend, Stephen “ESPO” Powers as he returns to his old stomping grounds in Philadelphia to paint a series of murals on 50 rooftops along the Market train line.

Check the official trailer below.
Check the official trailer below, looking forward to seeing this.<br>

Great to see the return of the Space Monkey in these two new limited editions from James 'Dalek' Marshall. Both editions are 8 colour screenprints, signed and numbered in an edition of 90 and are available individually at only $60 each from Daleks online store! Bargain.

The artist known as Trxtr has been building himself a very strong reputation on the Urban Art scene over the past five years, the evidence for this success being some recent notable auction results. He has shown his work in around the Bristol area and also in group shows in London and Los Angeles. This will be his first solo show in London.

The work Trxtr has produced for the 'Pretty Lethal' show at Signal is the culmination of this period of experimentation and creative self-discovery. The works will show us as an eclectic mix of atmospheres and emotions, as the techniques he uses to produce them. Their overall effect is disturbing and alluring in equal measure. Concerns about exploitation, globalization and corruption appear over and over again, but the tone is ambivalent. He is not preaching to us, but reproducing some of the sickly sweet images of commercialism in a way that it is genuinely hard to tell if he is celebrating them or railing against them. This interesting and unsettling approach has something of effect of Jeff Koons work.

The works Trxtr has produced for the 'Pretty Lethal' will make a very strong introduction to his work for London audiences. Like Koons, we may find that audiences are split, between those who can and those who can't see beyond the surface seductiveness of the work.

Clothing brand Carhartt are moving into the neighborhood with the opening of a new concept store Carhartt E1 on Shoreditch High Street, East London.

The new space will open this Thursday 1st March, check the store progress in this clip below shot by Andrew Telling who also shot the recently featured Black Herds of The Rain film which documented artist Conor Harrington's trip home to Ireland.

The Upfest Gallery is very pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition entitled UNION. ‘Union’ brings together a series of collaborative works by contemporary street artist Copyright and his partner, painter Gemma Compton in a celebration of their forthcoming marriage later this year. Both artists in their own right, this is the first time the couple have endeavored to work together producing a collection of all new unique work as a duo.

Each piece at the show celebrates two distinctive styles. Some of the paintings showcase each painter’s unique portraiture styling, whilst other pieces in the exhibition explore how two individual ideas on similar subject matter can be fused together.

Two distinctive artist works, together united.

Private View Thursday 1st of March 7 - 9pm RSVP Gallery@upfest.co.uk
Show runs from 2nd - 18th of March

We spotted some work from French based stencil artist AliCe in London over the weekend. From what we have read she was in town last week and left a number of small but beautiful muti- layered stencils around East London.

It also looks like the artist has been visiting Madrid, Spain, have a look at this clip of AliCe at work in the streets of Madrid last month.

It's great to see some footage from the opening of this show in LA. The Brazilian street art brotherly duo can do now wrong, the show looks stunning.

We only wish we were in Los Angeles to have seen the Os Gemeos show in person. For those of you lucky enough to be in LA, the show runs at the Prism Gallery until February 25th 2012. For eveyone else check the clip from the opening night below.

Alongside the exhibition, there’ll be free beers, kindly provided by Saint Lager, and live screenprinting from Pure Evil himself.

For the month of March, Pure Evil will be taking over Boxpark's outdoor gallery space with this range of Warhol, Rosenquist and 60's inspired prints. Icon Elizabeth Taylor is immortalized in the painting “Richard Burton’s Nightmare”. These pop-art pieces, complete with dripping eye make-up, are createded from a palette of strange hues with subliminal meanings.

Ahead of the exhibition launch, readers have the chance to WIN an exclusive, one-of-a-kind Pure Evil print, to be collected at the launch, follow this link for details on how to enter.

To tie in with LGBT History month, West London's Graffik Gallery has commissioned some of today’s best emerging and established artists, gay and straight to produce portraits of people who they believe have been an inspiration to the gay community.

Portraits of such figures as Marlon Brando, Michelangelo, Marilyn Monroe and Joan Collins serve as triggers of memory for both artist and audience. Gaze aims to reach beyond the gay community by getting together gay and straight artists from all walks of life and styles, from traditional portraiture to graffiti, glass and multi-media while also challenging people’s perception of what actually makes a gay icon.

FAILE Temple presents the New York-based artists’ most complex and ambitious project to date. For the Portugal Arte 10 festival, they created a large-scale, temporary installation of a temple on Lisbon’s Praça de Restauradores. Although inspired by the ruins of a Baroque chapel, its decorative frescoes and sculptures feature familiar elements from Faile’s contemporary oeuvre.

The temple project gave FAILE a unique opportunity to reinterpret and delve deeper into the core themes of their art—consumerism, globalization, and the tension between classical art and the profane.
FAILE Temple not only documents the finished project in all its fascinating detail, but also features images of its construction and installation as well as pieces that inspired its design. An insightful text about FAILE’s work by the art journalist W. Ian Bourland rounds out the publication.

The regular edition of the book is available on the Gestalten website here. A special studio edition pictured above will be made available later today via the Faile.net site. The edition will be limited to 500 copies and will be signed by the artists as well as including a ceramic Skull/Flower Tile in a linen box. This edition is only $95 dollars which is great value considering the standard edition will retail for $55!

Black Rat Projects presents Invisible Cities, their first show of 2012 features secondary market works by Banksy and Shepard Fairey alongside works by Swoon. This diverse group of artists are eponymous with the current Street Art movement in their retrospective cities. While these three artists work in very different styles addressing a range of different themes and concerns, what unites them is their creation of Invisible Cities; laid out over the pre-existing landscape in unexpected places – in these we find moments of unrestricted creativity and human connection.

Black Rat will be holding a preview evening for Invisible Cities on Thursday 23rd February from 6.30pm – 9pm.

We blogged about the new film “Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places” directed by INSA which aired last night on C4’s Random Acts. For our non UK readers and those of you who were busy doing other things at midnight last night here is the clip.

Neiman Marcus tapped L.A. graffiti/street artist Galo "Make" Canote to create a visual feast for Christian Louboutin's public appearance in Beverly Hills and a VIP dinner held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The new film “Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places” directed by INSA airs tonight on C4’s Random Acts. As the second of five original artworks Channel 4 has commissioned from Protein, esteemed fine artist and designer INSA presents a 2-min short featuring a collective of experimental mediums and music by Earnest Endeavours signed beatmakers Darkhouse Fam to round up Valentine’s Day in signature INSA-style.

INSAʼs work, contrary to what some may think at first glance, speaks to an inquisitive and informed viewership. His beautiful women, large bottoms, oiled skin, gold chains, high heels or name brand sneakers serve as modern icons and symbols of our lavish, unsatisfying, and money obsessed lifestyles.

Providing a critique of excessive consumer culture and commodity fetishism - represented throughout as the objectified female body - INSA uses the inherent “want” of humanity in this most modern context to ask whether this is the real route to happiness. Using heavy irony and self-awareness INSA explores the contradictions inherent in striving for money, success and happiness.

ʻLooking For Love In All The Wrong Placesʼ debuts tonight at midnight on Channel 4. Still to come, Protein produced films by Aerosyn-Lex, David McCandless and Doug Foster. Check out Tim & Joe's piece 'Light Percussion', which launched on 26 January here.

Tonight, 14th February at midnight on Channel 4: INSAʼs ʻLooking For Love In All The Wrong Placesʼ

Black Herds of The Rain is a film documenting Conor Harrington's trip home to Ireland in the summer of 2011 to paint 3 walls. The journey and subsequent paintings are inspired by Austin Clarke's poem The Lost Heifer.

adidas Originals recently announced the release of the adidas Originals Cover Tool, giving all you Facebook users the ability to express your Originality by offering us the tools to create and customize our own Facebook cover. As it's Valentine’s Day today, adidas Originals is showing the love to all users with a special set of tools and tokens allowing you to customize your Facebook cover with everything you hold close your their heart.

The Cover Tool lets you get super creative and you can choose from a variety of items, such as illustrations, various icons, backgrounds, fonts, colors, speech bubbles and even the ability to upload your own images all in order to fully customize your own profile cover based on your own interests, style and lifestyle.

While there are a number of websites already providing wallpapers to fill personal Facebook covers, the adidas Originals Cover tool allows you to create your individual cover and best of all it is completely free of charge. Go get creative and pimp up your Facebook profile here.

Graffiti artist MadC has just released a new edition with La Grille Gallery. The “Between the Lines” silkscreen print pictured is available for 80CHF/70EURO here from La Grille Gallery! It is limited to 50 pieces, 50x70cm in size, 4 colours, hand printed, signed and numbered.

Earlier this month saw the opening of her solo show also at La Grille Gallery, located in Yverdon Switzerland. MadC has a selection of photographs from the work on show over on her website here. Looks pretty fresh be sure and have a look.

Imbue has just released some new hand printed 'Holy Shit' Bible sketchbooks to their site. Hand printed with sepia ink on the first page. Signed and numbered in pencil. Edition of 50. Highest quality A5 sketchbook. Gold foil embossed with Holy Bible and Parental Advisory Explicit Content. They are available from the artist's website here for £20.

Following her UK solo show currently running at Tony's Gallery in East London, Polish-born, New York based artist Olek headed to Barcelona to catch up with Miss Vans. The two artist collaborated on some work and then hit the streets of Barcelona.

Olek's Exhibition "I do not expect to be a mother but I do expect to die alone” runs until the 23 March 2012.Tony's Gallery - 68 Sclater Street - London.

Sickboy drops his first limited edition print of 2012, entitled 'King of Undesire'.

Produced in a highly-collectable run of 50 , the print is as beautifully-detailed as its original counterpart and contains deeply personal narratives alongside the artist’s surrealist depictions of the world.

Fresh new work from Sheffield based illustrator and street artist Phlegm, who continues to blow us away with his black and white street work. His latest piece of work pictured, has been painted on an old oil tanker which has been beautifully captured by photographer Mark Blundell.

The title for the exhibition, Phantasmagoria will be themed around the ongoing cycles of sub-cultures and counter cultures, their art, and it’s eventual fuelling of canons of mass assimilation by fashion and media to the point of vulgarity and its serendipitous decaying of objective and social meaning in tribal and underground arts.

The exhibition brings together new and existing works: Jon Burgerman, Shin Tanaka and Boicut are global illustrators and custom designers. Isaac Cordal’s, Follow the Leader depicts debased failings of Western leaders. James Unsworth’s and Andrew James Jone’s work subscribe to horror and the grotesque that preserves the integrity of their art. Anwot makes art, taking inspiration from fetish clubs and the sex scene. Re-assembled pieces and new works from David Shillinglaw, pay homage to cult culture and philanthropy, Martin Wollerstam depicts corporations as monsters attacking the world and Roman Klonek prints are of mechanical cartoons and environments defined by logos. Otto Schade and Oliver Winconek paintings of surreal iconography can easily be found in the most fashionable parts of London’s East End. Dave Anderson and Agent Provocateur’s work satires fashion and commodity culture. Rebecca Strickson, incorporates contemporary art with creative industries, such as Nexus group and creative culture group, Soho House. Commissioned pieces by Todd Ryan White echo the psychedelic posters and record covers of Anton Kelly and Stanley Mouse. A new Matt Small sculpture addresses lost identity and inadequacy in youth culture.

Nice clip shot in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia at the local train yard. Vova Chernyshev and his friends wanted to document their outdoor activities focusing on delivering a feel of the place, rather than focus on the actual paintings themselves. Check the clip out below.

"Environment influences any person, alters his mood and actions. Each place has its own spirit. The choice of a place highly depends on the experience and result you are aiming at. There is no other place we know with such an atmoshpere that can compete with the tram yard at night. It is like a maze of iron, dark forest, broad field and peaceful slough at the same time."

JBAK is a creative partnership between artists/painters James Bullough and Addison Karl. Originally from Baltimore and Seattle, Bullough and Addison are currently living and working in Berlin.

"JBAK have blended their contrasting styles into a mashup of antonyms: realism vs. illustrative, expressive vs. precise, hard vs. soft, black vs. a spectrum. The pair seeks desirable locations paying close attention to the space and the people that live and work within it. Their intent is not to disrupt but rather, to integrate their art into the existing environment, creating harmony, balance, and adding life to an otherwise colorless wall. Together, JBAK create large-scale murals, which highlight their differing design aesthetics while at the same time, reaching a common goal—to give people a reason to look up, around, and beyond themselves." — Jennifer Weitman

For their very first show of 2012 East London gallery Stolen Space will be celebrating...and mourning... Valentines Day with an exhibition entitled 'Love & Hate'.

This will be a group show featuring a selection of mixed media pieces from various artists, as well as a few brand new screen print releases! Artists taking part in the exhibition include Chloe Early, D*Face, David Bray, Kai & Sunny, Word To Mother, Miss Van, Ronzo, Jeff Soto, Pete Fowler, EINE and Toshi to name a few. The show opens on the 9th February with a private view and the show then continues until the 04th March 2012.

Check out this video featuring a super fresh collaborative wall in Viena with artists Flying Fortress and Nychos. The video has been labeled Part 01 which suggests that more is to follow; we can't wait to see what they do next!

Boxpark resident charity Art Against Knives are to launch Boxpark’s new outdoor gallery on 2nd February, 2012. The gallery will be hosted along each side of the main thoroughfare on the first floor, adorning the walls of the food, beverage and charity units and creating a space for art that can be viewed by the public 24 hours a day.

Art Against Knives will be presenting 18 pieces from young artists who have submitted work to their 'New Beginnings' exhibition. The exclusive preview night, held Thursday 2nd February, 2012 from 6PM - 9PM, will take place along the top-level at Boxpark in Shoreditch, accompanied by music and drinks.

Original artworks and limited edition prints will be available for sale at the Art Against Knives Gallery with full proceeds of all sales going to support the creative opportunities that AAK provide for young people across East London. Each month, Boxpark plan to introduce a new Gallery exhibition event, allowing other brands to collaborate with local upcoming and well established artists in the community.

French based artist Mambo has sent us a video clip and this amazing ariel photo of his latest piece of work in Paris.

"In 1929, Johnny Weissmuller inaugurated the Molitor swimming pool in Paris. This wonderful Art Deco building is planned to be destroyed in 2012. This giant collage is a giant tribute to the Olympic champ aswell as a bridge between this golden era and today."

Have a look at the clip below of Mambo installing the large scale work!

Eloquent Vandals is a recently released street art documentary from the guys behind the Nuart website and festival. The documentary was shot on location in Norway at Stavanger’s Nuart Festival in 2008 by Saft Film. It features work and interviews with Blek Le Rat, Dotmasters, Nick Walker, Graffiti Research Lab, Dface, Know Hope, Zeus, Herakut, Sten & Lex and many others. Make yourself a cup of tea, sit back and enjoy.

Brighton based photography site The Photocopy Club, are hosting their first London exhibition this Thursday in one of our favorite East London hangouts, Beach London on Cheshire Street, just off Brick Lane.

The Photocopy Club host monthly photo exhibitions which feature Photocopied/xerox photography that photographers from around the globe have posted to them. We missed the first exhibition in Brighton but we are looking forward to seeing the photos here in London as well as enjoying some lovely free rum courtesy of Sailor Jerry! See ye down there.